His suggestion to let council choose post would bypass Olga Diaz, who’s next in line to serve in the position

Complaints of dirty politics from some angry Escondido residents and Councilwoman Olga Diaz prompted Mayor Sam Abed to retreat this week from an effort to revise how the city selects its deputy mayor.

Diaz, who is scheduled to take over the largely ceremonial deputy mayor’s post next month, said during Wednesday night’s council meeting that Abed’s proposal seemed like an obvious attempt to bypass her and choose someone else.

“It does feel like you’re targeting me,” said Diaz, known for a liberal philosophy often at odds with the more conservative four-member council majority.

But Abed said during the meeting that his proposal was about making Escondido’s process less rigid and more in line with how other cities select their deputy mayors. He said it was not an attack on Diaz, who was re-elected to a second four-year council term last week.

The proposal would have amended an ordinance that the council approved in January 2011, stipulating that the deputy mayor post rotate every two years based on seniority and whose turn it is.

Instead, Abed’s proposal would have given the council the discretion to choose whichever member it wants as deputy mayor, a job Escondido rotates after each council election.

Nine residents, including multiple members of the Escondido Democratic Club and the slow-growth Escondido Chamber of Citizens, said Abed’s proposal was suspicious, offensive and a political maneuver.

One resident speculated Abed was afraid the deputy mayor title would help Diaz if she challenged Abed in the 2014 mayoral race. And another said denying the post to Diaz, the council’s only Latino, would damage the pride of the Latino community, which makes up 49 percent of the city’s population.

“I’m baffled by this attempt to put politics back into the way deputy mayor is selected,” said Pat Mues. “I urge you to set this agenda item aside and not poke the hornet’s nest.”

Roy Garrett called the proposal a shortsighted attack on Diaz and her supporters, predicting that the amendment would make the selection of deputy mayor an ugly political fight each time.

“It might look pretty for the moment, but it’s going to be messy as hell in the future,” he said.

Abed said the speakers were making “assumptions” and drawing unwarranted conclusions. Last year, he strongly supported the rotational policy the council adopted, but said he’d recently had a change of heart.

“I was a strong advocate for the rotation process, but I see some problems,” he said, noting that some council members might not want to serve as deputy mayor. “I think we need to have more flexibility.”

Councilmen Mike Morasco and Ed Gallo suggested the council could allow Diaz to become deputy mayor, but shrink the term of the post from two years to one. But when Diaz said she was unwilling to compromise, Abed agreed to withdraw the proposal.

Deputy mayor is essentially just a title, and the council member serving in the post has no more power than any other council member. The deputy mayor runs council meetings when the mayor is absent, but Abed hasn’t missed a meeting since being sworn in nearly two years ago.